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Seventies Vintage

Teaching yoga class puts me in the unique position – yuk yuk yuk – of hearing people say stuff. That’s a simplistic statement, I know, but it’s true. I don’t know what it is about sitting on a yoga mat that makes folks say stuff, but it’s usually off the cuff.

Last week someone told me without equivocation that I am well into middle-age. I was sitting in front of five or six brave souls all sitting on their yoga mats settling in. I might have asked what we were going to do during class, which is my way of asking what’s going on with people’s bodies so I’ll know what poses and body parts to focus on. It’s like yoga class in-take; this is where you let me know you pulled a hamstring, broke up with your boyfriend, started a new diet and/or had a nervous breakdown. I’ll do the best I can to offer stuff in class to make you feel better or push you over the edge, whichever will help the most.

I do not remember the segue into the realm of age, but I landed at the ass end of the topic with the declaration that I am…”Well into middle age.”

I’m 37. The comment arrived so certainly that I wondered if I might be middle-aged and didn’t notice. I turned to trusted Google and middle-age is actually considered the period between 45 and 65. That’s a few feet away from smack dab “in the middle of” from where I’m sitting. One day I intend to be a middle aged yoga teacher, perhaps a hundred year old author. But don’t rush me. Let me tell you something, though – the baddest ass yoga teachers I know are all over fifty. They could do things to you with their third eye closed that would make you welcome the Universe home to your heart. Just saying.

Reader, I look a hell of a lot better than I did when I was in beauty school seventeen years ago. I had a doughy complexion from a terrible diet and my hair was so short you could see my scalp through the black shards of hair protruding from my head. I drank so much I don’t think I ever actually sobered up the first five or so years I did hair. I smoked so many cigarettes that getting my teeth cleaned was the equivalent of cleaning the ashtrays in the hotel where my great-grandmother worked when I was a kid.

Today, I’m mostly rested, sober, usually hydrated, fit and relatively balanced. I don’t color my hair so there are the tell-tale strands of silver that I am really sort of in love with. It’s not the thought of looking middle-aged that’s pissed me off, it’s the conclusions I’ve come to while I stewed over it.

When I was drunk in beauty school I had a boyfriend who was too old for me by about twenty years. I realize now that the reason he had to have a twenty year old girlfriend is because he was too emotionally stunted to date women his own age. What I realize now as a mostly grown-up person is that I am in the age group that is beyond the category of young. In a man’s world, no matter their age, their standards judge against the spectrum of appropriately young and not young enough.

For a woman, I might actually be middle-aged; it’s like I aged in cat years. Clearly, a woman’s willingness to put up with bullshit, which diminishes dramatically with age, is directly inverse to her value and good standing on the age spectrum. It’s not age that makes her less attractive but her unwillingness to suffer fools. It’s this unwillingness that creates the appearance of the crone in the eye of the beholder.

A girlfriend and I were talking just last week about the archetype of the crone. I’m not just talking about a Halloween witch or that spooky lady with the hump. I’m talking about the Crone Goddess revered throughout the ages and across cultures. She’s usually the least visually attractive of the Goddesses one might encounter, but she is by far the most beautiful.

There are tales and legends of the Goddess disguising herself in the image of a fearsome old hag as a trial for some untested knight. After all manner of quests and suffering he faces the fearsome face of the Death Crone. Can he see beyond the shadowed crevices of her face where he might press his lips? It is his liberation to see the beauty and life beneath the surface of the aged visage but is he nearly that smart? Within the Crone’s power is regeneration, power and wisdom but it’s not something you necessarily see with your physical eyes. This is a timeless knowing that spontaneously arises from infinitely intelligent heart, not something you can share on snap-chat.

Women are not lauded for this power of regeneration, power and wisdom though it’s a given that we’ll appreciate the distinguished image of the well aging man, but that’s somehow different.

The soul has no gender and is timeless, but that’s a struggle to realize face to face in the filters of the twenty-first century, where we see but a dim reflection in a mirror of who we really are. I do my practices so that I can know who I really am, and it ain’t this little ‘ole me all stirred up by a something someone said that I’m so sincerely seeking. In truth, middle-aged was tossed at my feet in jest, knowing the person as I do, but you can’t un-ring a bell.

There have been times something has come up and I thought to write a blog about it – that being what blogs are for, but I have restrained myself on occasion because the topic might not align with “yogic” standards. It’s not nice to say bullshit on a blog with Shiva’s image as the header picture. It’s also not yogic to pretend to be something I’m not, and sometimes I say bullshit. One of the benefits of being an old lady is saying whatever in the hell I want and getting away with it because I’m an old lady. See how fast I cashed in on that?

Of course, this is where I really feel the unusual predicament of being both a writer and a yogi; the yogi meant to let things go, to be like water and consume the world whereas the writer chronicles, burns and digests. It’s a weird place to be, but possibly it’s also a little taste of the freedom offered by the Crone’s wisdom. Just saying.